NATO versus the European Union

The aftermath of the Iraq war could turn NATO and the European Union into rivals

SO WHAT do the European politicians who spent so much time trying to prevent war in Iraq make of things now? Their reaction to the victory of the American and British forces is, so far, confused and grudging. In the early stages of the war Dominique de Villepin, the French foreign minister, dodged a question about whether he even wanted the coalition forces to win—before rushing out a clarification that of course he favoured victory for the allies. But, though official statements from European politicians who opposed the war now tend to be soothing and conciliatory about the United States, occasionally the mask (or the tongue) slips and naked hostility emerges. Guy Verhofstadt, Belgium's prime minister, recently said that the United States is “a deeply wounded power that has now become very dangerous and thinks it must take over the whole Arab world.”

Alarmed by the prospect of a new American imperium, European leaders will once again try to use the United Nations to rein in America. A call for the UN to run post-war Iraq is likely to emerge from a summit meeting of the French, Germans and Russians to be held in St Petersburg this weekend. The demand will be made in the name of international law. But there is also a clear element of self-interest, since France and Russia are permanent members of the UN Security Council.

Although the UN is likely to emerge as the central institutional battleground in the Iraq debate, the future of other international institutions is also now in question. Some Europeans are using Iraq to make a much bigger effort to turn the EU into an independent military power. Mr Verhofstadt is holding a mini-summit in Brussels at the end of the month, bringing together France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg to discuss European defence. The Americans are uneasy. Their ambassador to NATO says firmly that his government believes that “NATO should remain the pre-eminent security organisation in Europe”. The United States, for its part, has floated the idea that NATO should play a role in peacekeeping in post-war Iraq. Quite apart from the alliance's military clout, it would be politically helpful to give the British-American alliance extra multilateral support—without the complications and discord that would come with UN involvement. Unsurprisingly, France is less than keen.

Both discussions highlight the danger that the ambitions of NATO and the EU could begin to collide. Ever since the EU decided in late 1998 that it would develop a military capability of its own, diplomats at both NATO and the EU have slogged through long hours of negotiation to make sure that their relations are co-operative rather than competitive. When the Union launched its first small military operation in Macedonia earlier this month, taking over from NATO peacekeepers, top officials from both organisations were on hand to grant their blessing. The EU's senior military man (a German admiral), now overseeing the Macedonian operation, is actually based at NATO.

But France has always believed that in the long run the EU must assert its independence of NATO, an organisation it regards as ultimately an instrument of American foreign policy. Without an independent European defence force, the French believe there can be no independent European foreign policy. Michel Barnier, a Frenchman who recently chaired a working group on defence at the EU's current constitutional convention, says he wants Europe to foster a relationship with the United States “based on alliance, not allegiance”.

This rather abstract intellectual debate will come down to some hard practical issues in the coming months. Foremost among them will be the question of whether the French, Germans and others can persuade the EU to develop its own military planning structure independent of NATO—or whether indeed they decide to form their own military alliance outside the formal structure of the EU. As one senior NATO official puts it, “The issue of a separate EU military command is a huge dividing line.” Some of the arguments against developing such a facility are financial. An American diplomat argues that “when the EU has such huge unfulfilled needs for military equipment, in things like heavy-lift aircraft, the last thing it needs to do is to spend money duplicating facilities it can already use at NATO.” But lurking behind this practical objection is a political concern: why exactly do some European leaders think it so urgent to cut America out of their military planning?

A rather small pouvoir

If it comes to an arm-wrestling match between the Americans and France, the odds are that the Americans will prevail. In both NATO and the Union, the French are in a minority on defence. NATO's whole culture is profoundly Atlanticist. When France opposed proposals for NATO to aid Turkey before the Iraq war, it found only two supporters (Germany and Belgium) among NATO's 19 members. A proposal to discuss a bigger NATO role in Afghanistan was recently approved 19-0.

Most NATO diplomats say it is too early to discuss the alliance's role in Iraq—but nobody seems willing to rule the idea out. French efforts to take European defence in a direction that might annoy the Americans are also drawing strikingly little support from within the EU. The fact that Germany, the EU's largest country, is attending the defence mini-summit means that the idea cannot be dismissed, particularly since France and Germany have often been the motor of European integration. But it is still a very mini-summit, gathering up only four of the Union's 25 current and future members. Many of those who have long been keenest to integrate Europe, such as the Dutch, Italians and Spaniards, have explicitly distanced themselves from the meeting. And most military analysts think a European army without Britain would be absurd. It is ironic that a defence initiative promoted in the name of European unity could well turn out to exacerbate the European Union's divisions.